Seasoned Speech: Rhetoric in the Life of the Church

by James Edward Beitler

The implied answer is, of course, nobody. While Augustine does go on to insist that skillful rhetoric (and, more specifically, eloquence) is unnecessary to bring about another’s salvation, he also contends that it can make Christian wisdom more palatable.9 “We often have to take bitter medicines,” he writes, “and we must always avoid sweet things that are dangerous: but what better than sweet things that give health, or medicines that are sweet? The more we are attracted by sweetness, the easier it is for medicine to do its healing work.”10 Truth presented persuasively is sweet medicine.

My use of Paul’s metaphor of seasoned speech should not be taken to mean that I think rhetoric’s scope ought to be limited to matters of presentation (as Plato, Ramus, and even Augustine suggested). Practicing rhetoric is not simply about flavoring the truth with a dash of eloquence; it involves the discovery, invention, analysis, interpretation, construction, recollection, arrangement, and presentation of information, knowledge, and wisdom. And rhetorical activity is also not merely about appearances. It can be profoundly true.

Along similar lines, Lewis also practices a rhetoric of goodwill by translating theological discourse into language that is more readily understandable. Observing that doing so requires learning the vernacular of one’s audience, Lewis basically recommends that the Christian rhetor ought to determine how words are being used—not

By vividly depicting the past using the vernacular, the dramatist is more easily able to reposition audience members, forcing them to see themselves as characters on the stage and, ultimately, as participants in the biblical narrative. When we look into the mirror that Sayers sets before us, we are meant to see ourselves as Herod, Pilate, the holier-than-thou Pharisee, the know-it-all Greek gentleman, and—perhaps most terrifying of all—part of the angry crowd, feverishly shouting, “Crucify! Crucify! Crucify!”

Rhetorically I get this point. But Part of the problem of identification is that we individualize scripture and make it only about us

Burke begins “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle’” by arguing that though Mein Kampf infuriates and disgusts, American critics should not simply dismiss the book.14 Rather, they should study it vigilantly in the hopes of protecting the American people from the “‘medicine’ this medicine-man has concocted.” The so-called medicine Burke refers to here is the rhetorical activity that was instrumental in bringing about unity in Germany—a unity that Burke describes as “sinister.”15 Corrupting and parodying religious concepts, Hitler’s rhetorical strategy involved pitting the Rome-like capital of Munich against a diabolical portrayal of the Jew. Burke suggests that such an approach was effective because both the “unifying center” of Munich and the Jewish enemy were visible to the nation. Germans could look to Munich in prayerful reverence and look at “the visible, point-to-able form” of the Jew in disgust.16 Within this rhetorical geography, Hitler positioned himself at Munich’s center, presenting his “inner voice” as the sole authority of the Aryan nation and demanding “the total identification between leader and people.” Such identification was reinforced by silencing diverse voices and opinions. To enforce the silencing of this “parliamentary babel,” Hitler and the Nazis inflicted both verbal and physical wounds on dissenters and those who were different. Burke points out that Hitler, in addition to utilizing “the projection device” of “scapegoating” and “the sloganizing repetit...

One of his most famous pieces from this period is his essay “The Church and the Jewish Question.” Bonhoeffer spends the first two-thirds of the essay carefully delineating the proper relationship between the church and the state, seemingly attempting to anticipate objections of those who might see his argument as overstepping the bounds of the church’s political authority. Having done so, Bonhoeffer contends that it is the German state that risks acting outside of its limits by exerting “too much law and order” through “the obligatory exclusion of baptized Jews from our Christian congregations or a ban on missions to the Jews.”35 The piece’s rhetorical power lies partially in Bonhoeffer’s seemingly restrained tone, which leads, in measured argumentative steps, to bold claims and stark choices for German churchgoers. He warns that forcing baptized Jews out of the congregation “would always mean a genuine church schism . . . because it would make racial uniformity a church law to be fulfilled as a requirement for fellowship in the church.”36 In rhetorical terms, identification and division along racial lines undermines the essence of the church itself, which finds its unity through allegiance to Christ alone. Bonhoeffer writes, “It is the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not.”

“If someone feels unable to continue in church fellowship with Christians of Jewish origin, nothing can prevent him from leaving this church fellowship. But it must be made clear to him, with ultimate seriousness, that he is turning his back on the place where the church of Christ stands.”38

It is helpful to compare what Bonhoeffer implies here about Christ’s appearance to humans with what Burke writes about Hitler’s rhetorical approach.49 Recall that, according to Burke, Hitler’s identification with Germany hinged on the visibility of his enemy. He provided a “point-to-able form” that he and his followers could separate themselves from.50 In this rhetorical respect, Hitler was indeed a kind of the antichrist.51 He revealed his so-called glory to humanity by distancing himself from the so-called evil ones, whereas Bonhoeffer’s Christ hid himself among humanity by identifying himself with the evil ones—by becoming one of us. Paradoxically, through Christ’s identification with humans in our sinfulness, he simultaneously separates himself—Bonhoeffer uses the language of being “veiled” to indicate this rhetorical division—from all of humanity.52 For Bonhoeffer, no one can stomach the likeness of a “sinner”-God apart from the gift of faith. (For those with power, wealth, privilege, and self-righteousness, this Christ is acutely unappealing; for the world’s beggars, outcasts, and sinners, the rhetorical division, while still present, may not be quite as sharp.) It is, moreover, precisely because of the God-man’s hiddenness that faith can exist at all: “The form of the stumbling block is the form that makes possible all our faith in Christ. . . . Only when I give up having visible confirmation do I believe in God.”

For at the same time that Hitler was drawing Germany’s gaze toward a city shining with promise and away from a figure caricatured as grotesque and revolting, Bonhoeffer was noting that faith demands a turn in the exactly opposite direction—from Munich to the Jew. There are significant ramifications for public witness here as well. The God-man’s approach to identification and division reveals how the church itself may be called to show itself to the world. “With the humiliated Christ,” Bonhoeffer writes, “his church must also be humiliated.”54

Sermons, however, are different. They should convey God’s Word and purposes, not those of the speaker.

Bonhoeffer claims that “what [the sermon proclamation] must emphasize is not its proximity to the Volk but its alien character in the world.”64 Given the context in which Bonhoeffer was writing and his previous reflections on the relationship between the church and the state, it is not surprising that he speaks of a necessary separation from one’s ethnicity and nationality.65 Using the sermon to identify with people along such lines only undermines the efficacy of the church’s witness.

Barney Pityana, one of the Fort Hare students who was suspended, recounted Tutu’s courageous act as follows: We had been surrounded by police, with dogs snarling at us. We were petrified, for nearly two hours. Some people were crying . . . The staff of the university, the white people—some of them armed—these professors were watching and nobody said a word, nobody . . . Desmond [came] almost from nowhere, in a cassock . . . broke the police cordon and came to be among us. I recall moving scenes of young women kneeling to pray with Desmond for blessings. Even today when I recall that I get very emotional. For me that was the greatest example I could think of, of what to be a priest was about.

theologian Jennifer McBride develops an argument along similar lines in her important book, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness. McBride notes that, all too often, Protestant churches in the United States practice a “theology of glory” in place of a “theology of the cross,” resulting in a warped view of “a dominating God” and a distorted understanding of the church’s place in the world.89 Such views about God have significant consequences for Christian witness. McBride writes, “A privileged and affluent community trying to reflect this [dominating] God will be formed by that domineering image, becoming—perhaps without even noticing—a self-assured and/or defensive people.”90 When that happens, the form that our presentation of the gospel takes can undermine the content of the message, hindering our ability to serve as ambassadors of the One who chose the form of the cross as his primary bearing in relation to the world.

While Ames and Robinson do indeed care about belief as experience, I think that the primary purpose of these scenes is to acknowledge that, when trying to convince someone of the truth of Christianity, some modes of discourse should be used sparingly, if at all. Here it is important to note that, in refusing to answer Jack, Ames is not rejecting all truth claims or dismissing theological discussion entirely. Much of his life has, in fact, been spent reading theological arguments and engaging in debate with his best friend and fellow pastor, Robert Boughton. What Ames is questioning here (and what Robinson seems to be questioning through the character) is the profit of using argumentation to compel belief.

When Christian engagement with the questions raised by postmodernity was still in its heyday, most Christian scholars did not reject the fruits of postmodernity wholesale, and rightly so: though the postmodern critique of metanarratives and universal truth claims necessitated thoughtful replies from disciples of Jesus Christ, postmodernity productively exposed Christianity’s problematic entanglements with modernity. “We have learned from the postmoderns that knowledge is not disembodied,” writes theologian Kevin J. Vanhoozer. “On this point, postmodernity and incarnational Christian faith are agreed.”36 Building upon this consensus, Vanhoozer offers a suggestion about how Christians might witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in a postmodern context. “What is needed,” he asserts, “is a translation of the Gospel that goes beyond conveying propositions—a translation that would concretize the Gospel in individual and communal shapes of living.”37 Along similar lines, theologian Stanley Hauerwas argues that to witness effectively, Christians must not only tell others about the truth but also show the communal embodiment of that truth. He writes, “The needed incentive not just to entertain but to live Christian convictions requires the display of a habitable world exemplified in the life of the Christian community.”38 What these theologians call for, to reframe Vanhoozer’s and Hauerwas’s claims in terms of the etymology of ēthos, is for Christians to build, inhabit, and invi...

simply want to affirm the notion that, if the gospel of Jesus Christ is truly to reach the whole world, the church’s witness must go forth in multiple languages, through a variety of mediums, by way of different genres and voices, using a host of rhetorics. It must, in other words, understand the reality of Pentecost not simply in terms of the specific practice of glossolalia but as a rhetorical paradigm for the collective ēthos of the whole body of Christ.